Call for regression and performance testing - 8.0

[Robert Watson]

On Wed, 12 Aug 2009, Mike Tancsa wrote:

>> As we're approaching 8.0 BETA3, now would be a really good time to start 
>> identifying functional and performance regressions from the 7.x series. 
>> We've done a mixed job at this in the past, but when it comes to "I'll do 
>> better some day", there's no time like the present :-).  Some notes:
>
> Other than the removal of whats below from the kernel, what other 
> adjustments should be made to make more accurate comparisons ?

The main thing I'm aware of is malloc debugging in userspace -- the best way 
to do this is to uncomment MALLOC_PRODUCTION in src/lib/libc/stdlib/malloc.c:

   /*
    * MALLOC_PRODUCTION disables assertions and statistics gathering.  It also
    * defaults the A and J runtime options to off.  These settings are appropriate
    * for production systems.
    */
   /* #define      MALLOC_PRODUCTION */

You can also manually disable many of the debugging features in malloc(3) 
using malloc.conf -- however, it looks to me like some things, such as magic 
number checking, etc, are basically a compile time-only configuration option, 
so I'd encourage using MALLOC_PRODUCTION instead.

Robert N M Watson
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge

>
> # Debugging for use in -current
> options         KDB                     # Enable kernel debugger support.
> options         DDB                     # Support DDB.
> options         GDB                     # Support remote GDB.
> options         INVARIANTS              # Enable calls of extra sanity 
> checking
> options         INVARIANT_SUPPORT       # Extra sanity checks of internal 
> structures, required by INVARIANTS
> options         WITNESS                 # Enable checks to detect deadlocks 
> and cycles
> options         WITNESS_SKIPSPIN        # Don't run witness on spinlocks for 
> speed
>
>        ---Mike
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> Mike Tancsa,                                      tel +1 519 651 3400
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>